Truth, hope, and rock and roll

Before stepping onto a plane to fly halfway around the world to Toowoomba to perform for the first time in more than a decade, Rick Florian of Whiteheart says he's ready to rock this weekend at Easterfest.

"It's always been fun doing festivals, the energy is heightened."

"We're going to be different to most acts as we really haven't performed live in maybe 17 years."

But after several rehearsals, he says the band is ready and "able to enjoy ourselves."

Band members live scattered across the USA now, and Florian says it was quite a task just getting them all in the same room.

"But it was great. Having guys that know their craft well makes it a lot easier. Everybody knew their stuff when they walked in, it was just a matter of putting all the pieces together."

Some songs the band will play are more than 25 years old, and Florian says the band has given them a modern makeover.

"There are ways to twist it around, so the core of the song is there, but take it to a new and different place. That can be a challenge. Sometimes it's more sounds than anything else, sometimes it's the arrangement, or what you do with the vocals on the thing. There's one ballad we're doing we've changed the most because it felt the most, from a production standpoint, dated."

While not giving away the setlist, Florian says the band reached out to fans on social media to find out the songs they connected with the most. "We think we're going to play a good core of that. We have over 100 songs, and will only play maybe 12. There are some albums that have zero representation, but that helped pull in a couple of extra 'Freedom' or 'Powerhouse' songs," he says.

The singer says the trickiest thing might just be remembering all the lyrics.

"I wouldn't say there's only a 1 per cent chance of a 'lyric drop' will happen during the festival. There's probably a 20 per cent chance!" he laughs. But he's got a plan. "Our keyboard player remembers mostly everything. So if you see me running to the keyboards, and yelling just before I'm supposed to sing, it's probably me saying 'dude, what's the lyric!"

Florian knows he'll share the stage with bands more than half his age, but it's something that excites him.

"We have things we can learn from each other. I still learn from 80 year old people. In the same sense we'll definitely have things we can learn from them, and hopefully there are things they can learn from us."

As an artist that has poured his faith into his art, the thing that really excites Florian is the thought of singing his songs at this time of year.

"I've been thinking about it over the last couple of days. The fact we're playing at Easter, with some of the lyrics we sing, and the things we share, is just intense. This stuff goes to the core of me."

And that's where the hours of rehearsals and the long plane trip pay off.

"Sharing truth and hope with each other," Florian says. "That's what makes the whole thing beautiful."